Former Welsh Secretary David Hunt today backed Kenneth Clarke as the man to transform Conservative fortunes in Wales.

Former Welsh Secretary David Hunt today backed Kenneth Clarke as the man to transform Conservative fortunes in Wales.

And he claimed that the 'extreme views' of former Prime Minister Lady Thatcher had persuaded him to back Mr Clarke in the race to succeed William Hague as Tory leader.

Lord Hunt, who was Welsh Secretary between 1990 and 1993, also warned that the Euro scepticism of Mr Clarke's rival Iain Duncan Smith was at odds with opinion in Wales which is receiving hundreds of millions of pounds of EU aid.

The former Secretary of State's intervention comes as the Tories' last Prime Minister, John Major, endorsed the Kenneth Clarke campaign.

Speaking yesterday Mr Major said Mr Clarke was 'infinitely the most experienced candidate' who would win back lost votes from the centre ground of British politics. On Tuesday Lady Thatcher backed Mr Duncan Smith and predicted Mr Clarke's pro-European views would be a 'disaster' for the party.

Mr Duncan Smith was in Cardiff on Tuesday to meet Conservative members of the National Assembly.

Lord Hunt joins a growing list of senior Tories - including assembly group leader Nick Bourne, and Welsh party president Audrey Hull - to back the Kenneth Clarke campaign.

And Lord Hunt said today: 'Kenneth Clarke has policies that work well in Wales. They are the policies of partnership. We need to have unity to have strength and I certainly found him enormously useful at providing us with the necessary resources to be able to lead the campaign for greater prosperity and opportunity in Wales.'

The former Welsh Secretary said that by recapturing the centre ground, the Conservatives could win parliamentary seats again in Wales.

And he added: 'We have always been very positive about Europe in Wales, and particularly on Objective One and a range of other initiatives. People do have a question mark about whether or not we need to move any further on Euro scepticism. We don't want to be run by Brussels. We want autonomy and a strong economy in our own right. The idea of saying never ever to the Euro, I think would be a step in the wrong direction. We want to come back to the centre ground.'